Chapter Three explores the complex intersection between colonialism and the “Jewish Question” in nineteenth-century Algeria. It shows how debats about whether to extend French citizenship to the ...
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Chapter Three explores the complex intersection between colonialism and the “Jewish Question” in nineteenth-century Algeria. It shows how debats about whether to extend French citizenship to the indigenous Jewish and Muslim populations were reflected in Théophile Gautier’s play La Juive de Constantine [The Jewess of Constantine] (1846). The play, which depicts a Jewish woman rejecting her traditionalist upbringing to marry a French officer, dramatizes how French philosemitism in Algeria, which eventually led to the Crémieux Decree of 1870 enfranchising Jews but not Muslims, was predicated on a belief in the Jew’s supposedly greater aptitude for assimilation. The chapter shows that the example of the Algerian Jews’ naturalization helped solidify the opposition between French universalism and minority difference that would prevail both in France’s other colonial encounters and back in the metropole. The chapter also shows, however, that the struggle to extend French universalism to the Algerian Jews allowed metropolitan French Jews to express their difference in public and political ways.Less

Universalism in Algeria

Maurice Samuels

Published in print: 2016-11-02

Chapter Three explores the complex intersection between colonialism and the “Jewish Question” in nineteenth-century Algeria. It shows how debats about whether to extend French citizenship to the indigenous Jewish and Muslim populations were reflected in Théophile Gautier’s play La Juive de Constantine [The Jewess of Constantine] (1846). The play, which depicts a Jewish woman rejecting her traditionalist upbringing to marry a French officer, dramatizes how French philosemitism in Algeria, which eventually led to the Crémieux Decree of 1870 enfranchising Jews but not Muslims, was predicated on a belief in the Jew’s supposedly greater aptitude for assimilation. The chapter shows that the example of the Algerian Jews’ naturalization helped solidify the opposition between French universalism and minority difference that would prevail both in France’s other colonial encounters and back in the metropole. The chapter also shows, however, that the struggle to extend French universalism to the Algerian Jews allowed metropolitan French Jews to express their difference in public and political ways.